Skyefox, on 27 June 2012 - 07:11 AM, said:
A Davion light Mech would most certainly challenge a Mech 2-3 times heavier than itself, knowing full well that lancemates, armor, artillery, and infantry are at its disposal for support. Combined arms operations are the key to FedSun victories.
Stackpole writing is the key to your victories. (not saying it's bad writing, but lets face it)
Combined arms units fell out of use hundreds of years ago because armies no longer had the transport capacity to take all those tanks and troopers along. Remember Jumpships are far less common than everybody would like, and transport availability is one of the major bottlenecks for waging war.
They wanted a major war to shake things up (to sell more product) so they needed something that would shift the balance of power, breaking the dull stalemate that existed previous to the fourth succession war.
So the Davion "geniuses" reinvented a concept that been around since
the middle ages (even the romans combined mounted and foot troops with siege weapons for support), then the writers waved their magic wands and made all transport related issues disappear so that this amazing new strategy could break the stalemate, hand the Davions the victory, and sell a bunch of books.
Seriously, anybody who has ever done ANYTHING with logistics should have a decent concept of how horrible the idea of RCT's in BT are. IF you have enough transports to bring that many tanks and troops, you should really just bring MORE MECHS, since they are, pound for pound, a better choice for assaults.
Do the math, even if you figure 4 support troops per mech (giving you a total of 5 per pilot) you've got less than 600 people that you need to supply with food, water, and medical care per regiment compared to OVER 3000 for an infantry regiment in just TROOPS ALONE.
Similar logic can be applied to vehicle regiments. (unless they run on Fusion, which is kinda dumb since Fusion plants were listed as one of the major bottlenecks in Mech production) A vehicle crew might consist of 3-5 people compared to a Mechs single pilot. Add to that the need to worry about vehicle fuel (you know how much fuel a tank can burn in 1 day? and how much that weighs???) since no general with a brain will count on being able to capture it, and you've got a much larger total payload per combat ton for vehicles than Mechs. So while the vehicle is cheaper to build per ton, it's more expensive to transport per ton, and
less effective per ton.
Seriously, i can understand the logic in bringing limited numbers of foot troops along. There will always be things that a person with a rifle can do that can't be done by anything bigger, but there is practically nothing that a vehicle can do that a Mech cannot.
So, in addition to using a magic wand to make all transport issues disappear, they also came up with some serious Captain Planet hippie junk that caused Infantry, Vehicles, and Mechs to magically become more effective if they combined their powers.
(The one caveat I'll add is VTOLs, they have a very valid place in Mech units.)
All of this was done, not because it actually makes sense to anybody who really knows anything, but because is was needed to be done to move the time line along.
Now, I'm not complaining this was done. I read the novels. I enjoy the novels. I practice a little thing called "suspended disbelief" when I read them, same as when I watch any Sci-Fi or Horror stuff.
However, to brag that the RCT is some sort of brilliant genius level stuff is idiocy at best and lunacy at worst.
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